Fall

Fall always surprises. Maybe you find you don't need the fan to sleep now. Or that it gets dark earlier. Maybe you have to wait for daylight to start work now, or you can see that the plants are not the same kind of green they were.
It came during the state fair this year. The average temps dropped by ten or so degrees and we found it much easier to tie into some of the construction that always waits around here.

Fall appeals to every sense. I always smell late summer in the air in August. It is a weedy ripening kind of smell that I suppose must be difficult for allergy sufferers. The colors fade and deepen. While the grass isn't as green and lush as it was, the cattle gain better on fall grass. The cottonwoods talk in a different language. Cottonwoods are the prairie's gift to those who live away from running water. Their glossy leaves are getting stiffer now and the waterfall noise they make in the wind is louder in fall and carries further. At the time of leaf drop, they will start to rattle in the breeze.

We have frogs this fall. I startle a dozen or so up every time I walk to the cattle for a paddock change. This is new, and pleases us as much as the return of the grassland birds that we began to notice when we seeded the pastures down fifteen years ago. These creatures are our gauges, telling us that we are going in the right direction, or correcting us if we are not.

Today we set up huts in the permanent pasture for a small 14 sow September pasture farrowing. They start in about a week. Looking forward to it.

Jim

andouille

Success with a small family run farm and business depends on a blending of the strengths of all the people involved. The picture of our andouille sausage on the cover of a recent Minnesota Monthly magazine as part of the general noise surrounding our products in the Twin Cities media goes to the credit of Josh and Cindy, our younger generation. They are the ones finding and creating and testing new recipes since our business started. They found an andouille recipe because they thought there would be a market for it, then modified it, and then needed to adjust it again to fit with a new base mix for our sausage products. They are the ones that try to respond to our customers' concerns about ingredients in our products. They devised the spice mix for our new (a year ago) brat and hot dog products, they worked for several of our early years, together with the Agriculture Utilization Research Institute (AURI), to perfect a no-added-nitrite recipe for our hams and bacon.

This fame simply amazes an old farmer. Hats off to our partners!

Jim

making lemonade

The extremely wet spring and early summer, combined with a somewhat reduced cattle stocking rate resulted in pastures going to seed before we could react. Grasses in full seed are less than palatable to the cattle. We had practiced "long grazing" for the last two years to help our grasses to get better established, but had planned going back to a more normal practice this year. However, nature made up our minds for us.

The wet season also will make for fewer acres of small grains planted in the area, shortening our potential supply of bedding for the hogs and since the corn was all planted very late, it will not do to count heavily on being able to bale cornstalks, which is our other main bedding source. So we have been clipping the pasture paddocks after the cattle finish grazing, and then baling the mature grass stalks and leftover weeds to use as bedding in the hog areas. It is called "making lemonade" and farming involves quite a bit of it! I wish we could figure out a similar fix for the price and availability problems with corn, our main hog feed ingredient. We will just have to see what turns up.

spring

The weather is slow to dry up and warm up this spring, which presents a challenge for our cropping plans, which include getting some corn planted to take the edge off the extremely high corn prices. The pasturing is going well though and as the days get warmer, the grass is beginning to boom. It is a pleasure to walk out there each afternoon to advance and check the cattle. The meadowlarks are everywhere singing. Purple martins are active around the bird boxes. The cattle are losing their rough winter coats and beginning to look sleek and healthy. Next we must patch the fence between the sow winter housing and the pasture so that the breeding herd can join the cattle on the grass. So much to do, so little time! Spring in the country keeps an old man young!

Jim

nutrients

Today I will collect samples of the commercial soymeal we use to make feed, as well as the commercial corn and also our own organic corn. We have a build up of indications that there is something wrong with the way our hogs are being fed or something in their environment that is making hog production steadily more difficult for us. The animals do not breed satisfactorily, they are not developing a strong immune system, they do not seem to be able to live together in a manner that does not impede growth.

We will send these samples to the lab requesting a micronutrient analysis in addition to the usual feed value measurements. This is being done because Dr. Don Huber, professor emeritus at Purdue suspects on the basis of his work that Roundup herbicide and the genetics that allow its use as a broadcast over the top application on our feed crops is interfering with the uptake of micronutrients by breaking down the delicate and complex system of soil life that help plants to absorb these elements. Manganese deficiency is suspected, as well as copper, sulfer, zinc, boron and so forth. To check uptake of these, we will also assay samples of our hog's livers.

Dr Huber is, of course, being critized from within academic agriculture instead of being engaged in discussion and joint research work. The USDA, the "farmer" department cannot be bothered with thoughts such as these as they are entirely too busy releasing Roundup Ready alfalfa which many plant scientists admit will pass that gene around to all the alfalfa cultivars within a few years because of the way alfalfa breeds. As a farmer, I also have doubts about the organic corn seed I use. Judging from the overloaded Roundup Ready bandwagon I see around me, I don't see how it is possible to produce clean seed corn in this country. I suppose I will soon have to pay for that test as well. So much for the much ballyhooed nanny state.

We have plenty of government all right. It just doesn't work for us.

Jim

grassfed

Our friend and long time customer Ginger recommends the book "Tender Grassfed Meats" by Stanley A Fishman. One of his recommendations has to do with marinating steaks in unfiltered olive oil for several hours ahead of cooking. This we have tried, as I pointed out earlier in the blog, and found it an excellent approach to grassfed steaks. It is a good way to prepare lean meats and the healthier fat they carry for the heating process. Give it a try. Better yet, pick up the book. Thank you Ginger!

Spring is slow this year and it is hard to be patient. The cattle gaze longingly at the first blush of green over the pastures and the sows are crabby from being penned up all winter. As soon as we get a few warm days, the pasture season will start and we all will get along better. Until then, be healthy and stay dry!

patriotism

I hate airports. When I need to spend time there, as I did waiting for someone to fly in last week, I put myself in the "middle distance" to pass the time without noticing much of anything. Imagine my surprise when CNN, which I never otherwise watch, along with all the rest of the T V entertainment posturing as news, hammered me awake with the information that real questions were being asked in Congress about whether we could afford the attack we were making upon Libya. Congressmen seemed for the first time in recent memory to know how much each missle cost, what the cost was of supporting a bombing run, and so forth.

Now I have supported the idea of an active Congress keeping a watchful and suspicious eye on the warlike proclivities of the executive branch since I watched Senator William Fulbright, Dem-Arkansas (yes, that's right, believe it or not) chair hearings about the conduct of the Vietnam War in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that were anything but complimentary to President Lyndon Johnson, the leader of his own party. I in fact support the idea that since our constitutional division of powers pertaining to war has fallen into such disrepair due to Congressional weakness and Presidential viciousness, we should try to develop the understanding that war will never be undertaken (since we never anymore have anything close to WWII, a "war emergency"), without Congress passing a special tax levy to pay for the estimated cost. Taxes seem to be what most Americans understand the best.

On closer examination, though, the current events in Congress are not a sudden renewal there of an older sense of responsibility, but rather politics as usual. The same party and many of the same players raising the objections to Libya today were in control of Congress and making not a peep while George W Bush started Afghanistan and Iraq. Their noticing the cost of the military hardware being used today is less the patiotism that it sounds like at first blush, and more a simple hatred of Barack Obama. Accidental patriotism, you might say.